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Why Don't We Run All The Time?

Walking out to my car in the cold I wondered to myself why do we insist that our characters in games run as near to 100% of the time, only slowing down for some treacherous traverse or to check out some piece of 3-D architecture, yet we walk around slow as molasses? What’s the hurry we have in games that we certainly do not have in real life?

Given that I was given my right of passage through the parabolic showers of gibs of Quake 1, where it is only possible to be stopped or run at a uniform, top speed at all times, I get confused at the ability with, say, an analog control stick, to move at LESS than a uniform, 100% top speed. With all the years of FPS WASD–I had forgotten that this type of movement has been completely missing from gaming until the most recent generation of consoles. What’s more, the analog sticks, while ghastly slow for aiming, allow many more directional options than the 8-ways allowed in WASD. That said, I still see few reasons to go less than full blast running in, say Crackdown, but then there’s Bayonetta–who’s walking animation simply has to be viewed over and over and over from every possible angle. This post really was just a tangent to mention that walking animation.